


We Had Become Them

by MelanisticMoon



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Fallout 4
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Partnership, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secrets, Slow Burn, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:54:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27376792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelanisticMoon/pseuds/MelanisticMoon
Summary: Nathan Hersch was a Controller. Had been since the war. But unlike most hosts, his infestation was entirely voluntary. Waking up in the future the Railroad becomes the closest place to home, and with his morphing ability, he is invaluable to the cause. He must only hide from them that he, like the boogeymen of the Institute, is a Controller.
Relationships: Deacon/Male Sole Survivor
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	We Had Become Them

**Author's Note:**

> “The monsters in our valley were destroyed that day. Only a very few survived. But that was all right, because we didn't need monsters anymore. We had become them.”  
> ~K.A. Applegate

_Nathan Hersch_

They had been incredibly careful since leaving the vault. Both human and Yeerk had been stifled by the decades of cryogenic isolation. Estril gave sleepy electric pulses in Nate’s mind. It was too quiet. Nate hummed absently to himself, taking in the ruined world and the shambles of his former home. Their first priority had to be finding a Kandrona ray. Without it, Estril would wither and die, and Nate would truly be alone.

They hiked down the ridge from Vault 111 with only a vault suit, a Pip-Boy, and the 10MM pistol on their hip. Nate’s extremities tingled with a lingering chill. It had been a real concern, however many years past, that one or both of them might have been killed by the cryonic suspension. After all, it was not a matter of public record that Nate was, in fact, a Yeerk host. But their connection remained stable, torpid as it was.

The trees were skeletal as if in a permanent state of autumn despite their Pip-Boy reassuring them that it was late May. The ground was dusty, decorated with pockets of withered brown grass. Soon they crested the nominal hill of Sanctuary and saw the ruins of their sleepy suburb—the homes dilapidated and painted liberally with rust. It was eerie wandering the blacktop streets in silence but for his own humming. They _knew_ there were other vaults in Boston. Someone must have survived nuclear fallout. Not for the first time, Nate thanked the universe that he wasn’t alone in his own head. _Unless we can’t find a Kandrona_ , Estril thought and mentally recoiled.

“It’s ok, buddy,” Nate said under his breath. “We’ll find something.” He hoped Estril was too preoccupied to read his thoughts— _Three days_ , they said. That’s how long they had. Maybe less.

Without Estril, Nate was sure he would have simply sat on his doorstep and wept, but their time limit kept him walking. That, and a good dose of denial. “Should we fly to Concord?” Nate asked himself as much as Estril. It was a larger town than Sanctuary. There might be _some_ people still living there.

_If you morph, do it inside_ , Estril replied. _Who knows who’s watching_.

If only someone was, at least they would have someone to talk to. The sweet birches stared at him from backyards with their ruined eyes and made him feel as if he were being watched. And Nate had enough experience in the mind of prey animals to know the weight of eyes pushing down on him.

Nate entered their old home, shoving the mostly shattered door aside. Somehow the place remained unlooted, lending credence to the terrifying theory that Boston was abandoned. The bookshelves were toppled over, scattering burned remnants of books more resembling charcoal than leather and paper. The attached kitchen wasn’t much better. The fridge might have been shut but they could smell the putrid stench of 200-years-old rotted food from across the room. Nate covered his nose as his eyes streamed with tears. He coughed and speed-walked to the bedroom. All that was left of his bed was the broken remnants of a frame. The linens and pillows had gone to the moths.

Nate closed his eyes, blocking away the sight. He thought of the freedom and lightness of the northern goshawk. He felt himself begin to dwindle in size. Hands to wings. Feet to claws. When he opened his eyes feather patterns spread across his body like tattoos that gradually came to life.

They spread their wings and flew through the shattered window of their home.

Up they flew, up from the tiny nuke town that was Sanctuary. Up, up above what passed for trees until the landscape stretched out below them like a map. Up into brilliant sunlight. The world couldn’t take this from them. Even after nuclear fallout, morphing was in their DNA, as was every animal they had acquired in their shared lifetime. They were as much the goshawk as the goshawk was them.

To be a bird, free from gravity and society. To join the angels and Darwin’s finches. He’d give up pens and piano keys and his finger pressed to a trigger to _fly_. Yet when he’d flown high enough to the sun to melt the hubris from Icarus’ wings, Nate would give anything to hold a hand in his again.

Heavenward, the goshawk’s eyes scanned the horizon—that vault atop the hill, just a hubcap in the earth, the town of Sanctuary like a child’s ruined playset, and the scar tissue of roads snaking out and away towards Concord. Nate and Estril flew east over the radiant bullseye of the Red Rocket station.

Down below, a dog loped across fields of faded bracken and debris. A German shepherd, collarless and alone. Before he realized what he was doing, Nate was in a dive. They landed deftly on a bent and faded stop sign. The dog’s head shot up, ears and tail at attention.

_You humans and your dogs_ , Estril scoffed, but Nate knew his thoughts were fond.

Slowly, the dog slid his forelegs to the ground, rump and tail waving in the air like a flag. If birds could smile, Nate would be grinning. The goshawk brain told him _predator_ but he fluttered lower to the perch of a rusty metal road buffer.

The dog padded closer, tongue lolling. His cold, wet nose pressed into their feathers, tickling them with soft but furious sniffs. The dog backed away in confusion as they began to demorph.

Feathers melted away and flesh reappeared. Nate’s eyes grew dim and human again. His hearing was clouded. The furious quiet was back. His wings became arms and his talons grew to become legs. Thankfully, the vault suit was skintight and demorphed with him.

The dog whined. Poor, confused thing. Nate crouched down in the dirt and held out his now human hand as if for a handshake. The dog crouched in a play bow again, barking, and then leaped to his feet, pushing his nose to dry skin. He buried his muzzle in Nate’s chest and Nate smiled despite himself. He patted the dog’s soft but dirty head, concentrating on the animal in his mind’s eye. The dog slackened under his touch. His furiously wagging tail slowed to a lazy wave. When the acquiring trance was over, the dog sat, tail making a heavy _thump thump_ against the ground.

“Okay, boy,” Nate said. “Let’s go to Concord.”

They followed the old railroad tracks into Concord. With their bird’s eye view, they had seen the tracks leading the way through the heart of the town. The dog, yet unnamed, trotted loyally at their side. He looked… well, normal. They both had fears of how radiation might have ravaged the landscape, fueled by Vault-Tec warnings of mutations to follow nuclear armageddon.

_Spoke too soon_ , Nate thought, as the dog’s hackles raised and his lips peeled back in a low growl. A wrinkled, naked creature burst from an unseen hole in the ground a heartbeat later, shrieking with fury. Nate kicked out on instinct, punting it backwards a few feet like a football. The creature came back twice as mad as another popped from the ground and lunged at the dog.

_Should have brought the damn gun_ , Nate thought furiously, hastily picking up a softball-sized rock and hurling it at the naked animal, braining it with impact.

_You make your neanderthal ancestors proud_ , said Estril.

Nate snorted. He turned to another rodent popping up like a damn weasel to flank the dog. He quickly kicked the thing as the dog bit and snarled back twice as fierce as the rodents. Together they beat the creatures to bloody bags of tenderized meat and wrinkled skin. Nate’s lip curled in disgust. Wouldn’t be morphing _that_ anytime soon.

They remained thankfully unaccosted the remainder of their short journey to Concord—though the outskirts were disturbed by shrill buzzing like a mosquito trapped in the ear. They did not stop or wander to find out what the noise was attached to. The fields were so nearly empty as the past that each landmark raised implication, hidden and sudden as the dented STOP signs driven in the earth. Each gnarled tree portentous with history, fruitless but still rooted. Nate did not enjoy what his imagination conjured.

The sun was getting low. Nate cursed himself for leaving his Pip-Boy—with its map and working clock—behind. The vault suit may have morphed alongside his body, but something so machine and bulky never would. He picked up his pace and the dog dutifully kept up with his longer strides.

If seeing Sanctuary empty felt like a bad dream, Concord stripped away that denial like steel wool. Even with Estril’s compounded imagination, Nate couldn’t conjure the hollow, time-bitten town into being. Buildings moaned of wounds as the wind pierced them. The exoskeletons of cars, stripped and rusted, lay abandoned in the streets like an elephant graveyard. He couldn’t look in the store windows without seeing a shadowbox of the past. They kept to the sidewalks, eying the naked streets as they passed. Nate’s stomach twisted tighter and tighter for every block devoid of people.

They jerked to a stop as soon as movement caught their eye. Then an actual human person rounded the corner across the street and Estril couldn’t help but take control, raising Nate’s hand and rough-voiced, “Hey!” of greeting.

_WAIT_ , Nate thought too late as the man pulled a gun and leveled it at them. Only years of military training and Nate jerking back the reins to his body saved them from becoming riddled with bullets as the man opened fire.

The dog had different instincts. He charged teeth bared in warning. “Shit,” Nate hissed.

The 108 were taught to not fear battle wounds as they could always morph them away. With gritted teeth, Nate sprinted after the dog, an animal growl buried in his throat. The dog reached the man first, launching himself at his arm and wrenching from him a pained shout audible even through his gas mask. Nate followed the attack with a sweep to the man’s legs, knocking him flat on his ass with the dog still latched on. Nate stepped on the man’s trigger hand and pried the gun from his broken fingers.

Nate turned the gun back on him. The first evidence of people in the fallout, and the man nearly shot him, nearly shot his _dog_. He pressed the gun to the man's exposed throat.

He looked like a Liefeld character—dressed in rough leathers loaded with too many pockets, belts of grenades clipped around his shoulders, and rusty metal shoulder pads that gave Nate tetanus just looking at them. Nate ripped off the guy’s gas mask and stared at his scruffy, acne-ravaged face. He was barely a teenager.

Slowly, telegraphing every movement, Nate unclipped the boy’s explosives belt and set it down behind him. Then, he rummaged through his pockets, finding ammo and setting it aside too.

His eye contact never wavered. He let him keep the hunting knife. Satisfied the boy was reasonably disarmed, he pulled the gun away and towards his side.

“What’s your name?” His voice rasped out like sandpaper.

“Wh-what?” The boy squeaked.

“Your name, kid.”

He scowled as if more insulted by being called a kid than the gun that had been pointed at him. “Hubcap,” he sneered.

He graciously did not laugh at the name. “Good to meet you, Hubcap.” And, gun aside, Nate was. Good to see another living, breathing human again. He stepped off Hubcap’s arm—the boy hissed in reflex—and held out a hand. “I’m new to Concord. Do people here usually greet each other with guns?”

Hubcap’s unmasked face did a dance between confusion and indignation. His mouth opened and closed like a fish, then thinned. “This is Corvega territory.”

Nate let out a long breath from his nose. Gangs, of course. He’d grown up in a Boston rife with gang violence. The police pushed back but they only made it worse, got innocent kids like him caught between being branded a narc or a troublemaker. Then they barricaded every other path until your only choice was this: the army or jail. Nate had chosen the former and still didn’t know if the more traveled road was the right one.

_It got you here, didn’t it?_ Said Estril.

Nate smiled. “Come on, Hubcap. There’s no need for us to fight. Besides, you may feel tough but you can’t win every battle.” When the boy did not respond, he added, “there’s no reason to fight. As you can see I have nothing you would want.” He gestured to his pocketless skintight vault suit obscuring very little of his body’s form.

Hubcap didn’t have time to answer though as voices rose in the distance. Nate and the dog’s head both snapped to the sound. More people. More angry, violent people judging by the shouting and eruption of gunshots.

Generally speaking, it’s a poor life choice to walk _towards_ the sound of a violent altercation. But as Estril has said, Nate lost his fight-or-flight instinct years ago and now he was just left with fight. With a “good talk” and a wave good-bye, Nate left Hubcap sitting there in the street and hoped not to get a knife in the back.

He stalked up the street in the meager shadow of the storefronts, a blue-and-yellow beacon against the drab, washed-out buildings. When he reached the end of the block, they found more “Corvegas”—judging by their gear—spread out in lazy formation flanking a building whose identity withstood the test of time: the Museum of Freedom. A man in honest-to-god colonial dress stood up on the balcony, a tricked out musket in hand.

_They’re hunting him_ , said Estril. _Like animals_. He showed Nate a memory: an unlikely circus of disparate megafauna rampaging through the Yeerk pool, ripping apart Hork-bajir controllers as if they were stuffed toys. The Andalite Bandits. All Estril could feel, breaking through the fog of recollection, was overwhelming terror.

Nate’s head spun as he recovered from the burst of memory. There was no mission briefing here, no chain of command, but Estril was right: he had to act.

Estril latched on to Nate’s senses, creating an effect like time slowing down. He turned their head to the closest Corvega, and Nate fired. BLAM! The bullet tore through the air and then through the man’s arm. His rifle flew from his bloodied hand and clattered to the pavement. Estril pivoted, Nate fired. BLAM! BLAM! Two more Corvegas fell to shattered kneecaps. Nate stalked forward, swooping up one of the fallen rifles from the street.

A loud-bright blast announced the death of another Corvega—her torso dissolved to ash like her flesh was made of flash paper. Nate looked at the colonial man above, his musket smoking. It killed just like a Dracon beam. Slowly, mercilessly.

“Your timing is impeccable,” the man called. “Please. I have civilians in here. Help me ward the raiders off.” His voice was blunted as an overborrowed pencil.

_That was murder_ , Estril hissed.

_No_ , thought Nate. _This is just another_ war.

_Whose war?_

Nate didn’t have an answer. It didn’t matter.

The Museum of Freedom. If the man with the musket was true, there were civilians inside. And, maybe, hopefully, answers. Nate and Estril came to an agreement and walked through the doors, their dog happily plodding along at their heels.

Nate did an old trick of his. He morphed cat, making sure his eyes made the change before he stopped, blinking feline night vision into focus. He still had a two-hour time limit even half-morphed as he was but it gave him a competitive edge on his targets. It took He and Estril weeks of practice before they could pull that off, but it was a useful party trick to play for his old squad. It made his usual brown eyes turn to amber, and his pupils shrunk to hungry slivers in the dark.

It was a bonus that his eyeshine could startle people when they saw him peering from the dark. He crept with borrowed cat’s grace through the mural of the American Revolutionary War under two generals, two flags. Then rose his gun and fired. One-shot. Two shots. Right through the kneecaps. Disarm and confiscate their guns’ bullets. Move on.

Nate could do this. Not because he owed these people anything, but because he owed himself. He owed himself for every year spent in a campaign of violence responsible for this newly broken world. His lungs filled and breathed in the centuries of dust. They breathed out the tension.

Estril kept his eyes on target and Nate’s body responded in kind. A sharp Corvega shot close and Nate hissed as the bullet tore through the muscles in his shoulder. Hopefully, the bullet went clean through; it was hell morphing a wound away when you could still feel the bullet tearing at your insides.

Any pain that did not kill them could be endured, and eventually, erased with the ease of a morph. It was a lesson drilled into Nate’s head from his commander. The pain told him he was still alive. The bullet he put in the raider’s knee said the same.

Nate and Estril cleared the dangerously dilapidated floors of the Museum of Freedom room by room, earning a bloody graze to the thigh and bat-shaped bruises on his chest for the trouble. Nate wheezed on the top floor and leaned against a mostly intact wall, blinking cat eyes to scan the hall. No movement, but there were voices behind the door–rising, angry voices.

Nate limped forward. He kicked open the door with his uninjured leg, wincing as he put pressure on the wounded thigh. Dogmeat dutifully grappled the nearest Corvega, neatly lining up the shot for Estril and Nate to hit. BLAM! They kicked the incapacitated woman’s gun aside.

Another door swung open and Estril aimed true, then paused. It was the man, the one dressed like a colonial cowboy, Dracon beam in hand. He took in the room with the two downed Corvegas, the german shepherd daring them to move with a doggy bared grin. “Thank god,” he said at last. “Please, come in. We should talk.”

Nate nodded stiffly and lowered the gun, then limped through the door. The cowboy closed it behind them.

“You’re injured.”

“I’ll live.”

He gave Nate a dubious look but didn’t push further.

The man wasn’t lying about having civilians up there. That was...that was good. Neither of them wanted to get in the middle of another war without context. Besides the colonial cowboy, there was a hunky greaser in overalls, an elderly woman sitting on a ruined sofa, and a young Asian couple clinging to each other in the corner.

_Do you think any of them could be Controllers?_ Asked Estril half with fear and half with hope.

Nate couldn’t ask outright, he knew. Before his big sleep, Yeerks weren’t common knowledge and most of those that did know the Big Secret would either shoot you or infest you for asking the wrong kind of questions.

“Is this all of you?” Nate asked.

“All that’s left,” said the cowboy, clearly the leader here. “There were twenty of us when we fled Quincy, but now…” He clenched his jaw as if biting back words or tears. Up close, they could see the dark circles under his eyes, a familiar hunted look they knew from the trenches of Anchorage.

“How can I help?” Estril asked, unbidden. Nate didn’t correct the words—they had agreed already—but he couldn’t help counting down the hours of Estril’s life as his partner starved in his head.

“There’ll be more of them raiders coming,” said the greaser. He held out a hand and Nate shook, feeling the man’s thick calluses. “I’m Sturges.” He gestured to the cowboy. “Our fearless protector here is Preston.”

“Commonwealth Minutemen,” Preston added, meeting his eyes. Then he startled. “Sorry, don’t mean to stare. Don’t see many mutes outside of Goodneighbor.”

Nate and Estril puzzled over this until the latter realized. _Oh, our eyes are still feline_.

Nate concentrated, eyes closed, then blinked open to a darker world. _Might as well see if we can trust them._ Estril’s disapproval was palpable, but he didn’t stop him.

“Not a mute,” Nate said. “I think. I’m guessing you don’t mean someone who can’t speak.”

“He’s an Animorph,” the old woman muttered, staring straight ahead. “A soldier from the past, unfrozen.”

Nate stilled. Preston and Sturges had the same incredulous look he was sure his face was wearing right now. “How did you—how could you possibly know that?”

“Mama Murphy knows things,” she said, finally looking at him. She chuckled knowingly. “The Sight tells me what eyes can’t see. And I see you both, Wanderer.”

Estril shivered. _She’s like a Yeerk on ginger_.

_No_ , Nate chided. _She’s like a person whose brain thinks differently. As a plural mind, we’re hardly one to judge_.

“Mama—” said Preston.

“Don’t worry about it, Preston dear,” she cut him off. “They’re friendly. Besides,” she said, gesturing to the dog. “Dogmeat trusts them.”

The use of the plural pronoun had Estril jerking back control, and Nate let him without protest relieved to take a backseat in his body.

“If Mama says you’re friendly, I believe her,” said Sturges firmly. “Hasn’t led us astray yet,”

“Agreed,” Preston decided. He adjusted the angle of his hat. “Who or what you are is none of our business. All that matters is that you helped us out. And hopefully will help us a little further?”

Those warm walnut brown eyes of his could guilt a sinner into a synagogue. After years of partnership, Estril wasn’t any more immune to human charm than Nate was. “Tell me what you need me to do.”

There was an old vertibird on the roof. Despite being a 2nd battalion soldier, Nate did not have power armor training. His regiment, the 108, were all military class morphers. Where some soldiers had Psycho and T-45’s, he had battle morphs.

Nate felt weightless as Estril conjured an image in their minds’ eye. Preston was up on the balcony again, waiting with his Dracon beam at the ready. Nate hoped he wasn’t too squicked out by the morph—he himself had thrown up the first time he saw his comrade’s bones break through skin during the change.

His body expanded awkwardly, stomach bulging. Fingers and toes fused together. There was an audible _SNAP_ as his jaw broke and refused, stretching out as his nose retreated and teeth elongated into tusks, tingling sharply as a joy buzzer in his mouth.

The sinews in his limbs stretched until almost snapping, holding up his rapidly increasing muscle. Estril screwed his eyes shut as they experienced the worst kind of growing pains. Nate was glad Estril’s control of his body could turn those signals off.

_Are we really doing this? Killing these people?_ Estril asked.

_It’s not like we’re just walking up to them on the street with a gun, Estril._

_That’s not a fair argument and you know it,_ thought Estril testily. _We’re a soldier using Andalite military technology against human civilians._

The _rap-rap-rap_ of automatic gunfire soundly interrupted their moral argument. The red beam of Preston’s gun answered. Estril retreated to the back of Nate’s mind as the morph was complete.

There was a third mind in their head now, and the hippo wanted to defend its territory. Nate let it loose with a mighty _ROOOAAARRRR!_ The deafening cry echoed from building to building like rolling thunder, shaking the street and rattling the ruined cars.

In the distance, something roared back.

Realizing they were caught between two beasts, the raiders began to panic. Nate charged into the fray, slamming his head into the nearest raider. The force of his headbutt threw the man into the air then crashing back to Earth and unconsciousness. He turned to the next and banged their heads together like cymbals. She dropped like a load of bricks.

Nate’s flank bloomed with bullets and he jerked his head to the side. Two raiders had weapons pointing at him. Preston turned them to ash before they could react and Nate couldn’t decide if he should thank him for that or not. The so-called Minuteman might not have known the low-cal bullets would do the hippo no lasting harm.

The distant creature—now not so distant—roared again followed by an all too human scream. Nate lumbered to the center of the street. It wouldn’t matter if they killed the Concord raiders or not; if he didn’t intervene now this creature would.

It towered seven feet tall on two legs. Its body was covered in leathery, green-black skin mottled with lesions and sores. Every joint was protected with a blade—sharp and scimitar-curved—and its massive claws were curved like sickles. They watched in horror as it plucked a raider from the asphalt like a toy soldier and used its claws to disembowel her with one decisive slash, her organs spilling out hot and steaming onto the pavement. Then the creature tossed her emptied body to the curb and snarled.

<EVERYONE CLEAR OUT> Estril boomed in thought-speak, broadcasting broadly enough to reach all of the scattered Corvegas. They were smart enough not to argue.

The creature paused, its long serpentine neck craning for the source of the thought-speak. Its head swung like a crane from the disemboweled raider to Nate and Estril.

_Stay beneath its guard_. _Its neck and belly don’t have any blades to protect them,”_ Estril advised.

_Enemy_ , the hippo mind added unhelpfully. _Run it off our territory._

Nate didn’t wait for the creature to come to him. He galloped down the street and hit it with the force of a pickup truck speeding down a suburban road. His injured flank screamed in protest at the force of the collision, but the creature screamed louder.

Its claws raked down Nate’s sides, slicing like a cleaver through a slab of pork, tearing his thick hide to ribbons. Nate opened up his massive maw and bellowed in pain. Then his jaws snapped shut with the second strongest bite in the animal kingdom. Canines and incisors met thick scales and shattered them like pots to potsherds. His jaws were a steel trap of pressure. Tinny blood flooded his mouth.

Most animals have a hundred ways to avoid a fight—threat displays, colorful tags warning of poison, tactics of de-escalation—but when they choose to fight, it’s usually over in seconds. They trembled there, locked by tooth and claw, both bleeding but neither willing to retreat. Nate’s head swam. Vision blurred. He was distantly aware of the familiar TSEEW of a Dracon beam firing. Then everything went dark.

_Nate_ said a voice, swimmy and distant. It was in his head. _You’ve got to demorph_. _Nate!_

_Please. No_ , he thought. _Not again_.

Nate swam to the surface of consciousness, gasping for breath that wasn’t there with lungs he couldn’t control. His body was wrong. He couldn’t feel his fingers or toes. With a concentrated effort, he tried to move, but his body locked up as if paralyzed. Panic rose like hot air, ballooning in his chest.

_Nate_ , said a voice, said _Estril_. _It’s me. We’re okay. I’m holding onto our body now, but you need to demorph, okay?_

Nate tried to nod but couldn’t. _Yes_ , he thought dizzily. _Demorph_. He saw a picture in his mind: himself—ten fingers, ten toes, broad shoulders, and curly brown hair. Still wearing that gaudy blue-and-yellow vault suit.

Nate was shrinking. His thick armored hide thinned and shrunk like plastic saran wrap vacuum-sealed to his muscular hippo body. His skull crunched as it receded into itself, becoming flat. It felt like having his nose broken and reset. Tree trunk feet split into branches of fingers and toes and Nate shrunk down, losing two tons of muscle. There was the guttural sound of someone throwing up, but Nate didn’t think it was him this time.

He blinked up at the sun. The dark silhouettes of birds flew across it, too brightly backlit to count. He was warm and sticky. He put his hand to his bare neck, feeling the blood and blood-sweat coating him like gobs of sticky lotion. His hands were trembling with exhaustion.

Dead at his feet, bisected into two halves by the stomach, was the body of the creature. Bluish-green blood had pooled from the tableau and mingled with his own like the ground zero of a vicious paint balloon war. His throat burned. He rose to his hands and knees and spat out a thick glob of saliva and half-swallowed irradiated blood. His stomach felt queasy.

The air was knocked from his lungs as a body crashed into his and Nate thrashed until he felt the big doggy tongue washing his face. “Heeey, boy. Good boy, Dog...Dogmeat,” he praised. His chest tightened in a guilty-thankful ache: he had forgotten his loyal canine companion in the fray, but the indomitable dog had survived.

“That was like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Pushing Dogmeat aside, Nate gave Preston a once over. The man looked haggard and vaguely green about the gills—Nate could hardly fault him for losing his stomach at witnessing the transformation from hippopotamus to human. He was sure his current human body didn’t look much better covered as he was in blood and the hippo’s pinkish, oily blood-sweat.

Preston offered him a hand up and Nate took it, only wobbling slightly to his feet. The street tilted with disequilibrium as if his eyes and ears were in the wrong place. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. Eight years as a morpher and Nate still got morphing vertigo.

“Damn. Are you okay?” Asked Preston, steadying him with a supportive arm under his. He was bleeding from his other arm where a hole had torn through his sleeve.

“M’fine,” Nate slurred. “Just tired.”

Preston didn’t look convinced. “We ought to get you back into the museum. I’m sure… doing _that_ took a lot of you.”

Nate scowled but Estril had him nodding, always the fussing mother hen. Together, he and Preston shuffled back to the Museum of Freedom where Preston promptly set him to rest on a beaten-down couch. The springs dug into his back. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing.

When he opened them again, Sturges, Mama Murphy, and the Longs had joined them downstairs. The woman—Macey? Marcy?—was giving him a distrustful glower that could strip the paint off a car.

“Do you,” Nate croaked. He cleared his throat. “Do you have any water?”

Marcy sneered but Sturges stood up from whatever gun he was tinkering with and dug into a backpack resting on the floor, bringing over a sealed can and popping it open. Nate took it gratefully, letting the cool water pour down his scratchy throat. It burned a little going down and he coughed.

“Sorry,” said Sturges sympathetically. “Don’t have any water without some rads in it.”

“Gives it a nice spicy flavor,” Nate joked weakly.

Sturges laughed politely. When Preston returned, Dracon beam in hand, they stood shoulder to shoulder slightly leaning on each other.

“I have questions,” Nate started.

“— _You_ have questions?” Said Preston incredulously. He laughed but the sound was perfunctory, expressing disbelief instead of amusement. “You come out of nowhere like some kind of pre-war supersoldier turning into old world animals and fighting off raiders for no reason.” Nate could swear there were stars in the nightscape of Preston’s eyes.

“I, I _am_ pre-war actually,” he said quietly. “At least assuming by war you mean pre-nuclear annihilation. I was in a vault,” he gestures to his dirty, bloody jumpsuit, “where they had us in some sort of—“ He searched for the word and Estril supplied, “cryonic storage.”

He didn’t fault Preston for his skeptical look. He didn’t half believe it himself.

“You’re looking for a pool,” Mama Murphy said vacantly.

Nate couldn’t tell if she was following the conversation or not, but it sounded like she knew something they didn’t. With some effort, he pulled himself from the couch and crouched down by the legs of her chair. “Do you know where I can find one?” He asked her gently.

“You weren’t the only two in a vault.”

Nate and Estril’s thoughts collided and bounced around like greased up pinballs. She was right. Dead or alive there were other humans in Vault 111, and he’d bet his jumpsuit that there were Controllers in the other vaults, too. There was no chance the Yeerk Empire didn’t prepare for the eventuality of nuclear war on Earth. And if they did, one of those vaults had a Kandrona ray.

Estril, taking over in renewed resolve, jumped to his feet and addressed Preston and Sturges. “I need to find another vault. No one else survived in mine, but maybe…”

The two men traded a glance, silently communicating something between them. Preston offered, “The only vault in the Commonwealth that still has anyone living in it is Vault 81. I can mark it on your map.”

“I’m sensing a but,” said Estril.

“But we’d really appreciate it if you would stick with us just a little longer,” said Sturges.

Preston continued, “There’s this place called Sanctuary…”

_No_ , Nate wanted to say but couldn’t.

_Nate, these people need our help_ , Estril thought. _We owe it to them to see this through_.

_I owe it to_ you _that you not die!_ Nate thought furiously protective.

_And if these five humans die because we left them here?_

Nate didn’t know how he could make Estril understand. They were connected—surely he _knew_. And yet he insisted once again on throwing himself under the bus to protect people they had only just met.

_This is my choice, Nate._ _I don’t make decisions about your life, your safety, without your consent. Do me the same respect._

Oh, that was fighting dirty. Nate said nothing. Estril knew his opinions clearer than purified water.

“...just over the hill.”

“Okay. I’ll go with you, Preston.”


End file.
